


Taking the World by Firestorm

by The_Fish_291



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, I love you Lucretia, IPRE, also before Lucretia wiped everyone's minds, also them meeting the squad, the adventure zone - Freeform, the good old days before the apocalypse, this is mainly about the twins and their adventures/struggles in the IPRE training phase
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 02:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fish_291/pseuds/The_Fish_291
Summary: The twins go to nerd school. You know, school for nerds?(The IPRE is a tough place for street-urchins turned serious arcanists.)





	1. Taako Fails to Steal Cheap Earrings

Taako is eyeing a pair of giant hoop earrings at a market kiosk, fingers itchy, when Lup bounds up to him. Her eyes are shining and she’s holding a large stack of papers in her arms.

“What’s up, Lu?” She raises an eyebrow at him, and she probably would have punched him in the face if not for the papers precariously cradled in her hands.

“I want to go to nerd school.” His hands pull back from where they were surreptitiously worrying the earrings and go to his hips.

“You want to what?” He can see, now, that the stack of papers is a bunch of application documents, on the top of which is a flyer that proudly, in bold red letters exclaims, ‘Become a Red Robe! Apply for I.P.R.E. today!’ along with pictures of an elf, a human, and a dragonborn all clad in red, arms linked, with the circular insignia of the Institute emblazoned on their robes. _Ew, they’re all matching,_ Taako thinks. 

She begins leafing through the documents, occasionally thrusting one into his face expecting him to read, all while chattering excitedly.

“Do you think we could find a reference? Page three says we need one… Oh shit no, it says we need two. Well, I’m sure the owner of that dive bar we cooked for would vouch for us if we threw some gold his way. Oh, and if we ace this audition bit, we won’t need to worry about tuition and training fees. It says the rooms are supplied, and spacious, but we both know that’s bullshit, they probably count vertical space in the square footage and expect everyone to be in bunkbeds like snot-nosed brats. Anyway…” And she goes on.

Taako turns away from the jewelry display and faces Lup completely. She stops, mouth open, then closes it. On anyone else it would look sheepish. From the angle of her jaw, though, Taako can tell she’s being more… mule-ish.

“You want to go to _school_ ? You want to apply for a _four-year_ program at a--” He grabs one of the papers near the top and points to a line “--’ _prestigious_ research institute for the arts both arcane and otherwise’. Lup, we’ve spent our entire lives doing magic for money on the road, and we’ve done fine! So fine enough that I might actually _pay_ for these earrings!” He takes them off the display and holds them in her face.

She looks at them, then back at Taako, with her eyebrow still raised. _Don’t hold your face like that for too long, it might stick,_ he thinks. “You know those are fake, right? They only cost a few copper. Your ears’ll be green in a couple hours.”

Taako bristles. “Fine!” He throws the earrings at the display and brushes past his sister back in the direction of the merchant they’ve been travelling with. “You can try this nerd thing, train with some knuckleheads who can’t tell a second-level evocation spell from a cantrip, explore the planarverse, and when you get back,” He looks over his shoulder and sees her, eyes blazing, following him with the application papers still clenched in her arms, “Send a carrier pidgeon my way. I’ll be a famous travelling chef by then, whose risotto won’t burn because _someone_ can’t help but throw some pyrotechnics in the mix.” His fists are shaking as he keeps walking, then slows. Her boots aren’t right behind him, they’ve stopped.

He can see her standing in the road when he looks back again, heart pounding in his chest. She is still furious and she might catch the papers on fire if she’s not careful, but they might be extinguished by the tears he can see forming in her eyes.

“You asshat, can’t you see this? We might get to learn from people who actually know what they’re doing, train with the best, and do dope shit for the world, and _this_ is what you want to keep doing? Smelling mercenary armpits day-in and day-out, who can’t even tell that the risotto is burnt because they don’t know what a _fucking risotto is?! This is all you want?!_ ”

She’s drawing an audience, now. For the first time in as long as he can remember, he wishes she wouldn’t.

Lup walks towards him, then passes him, hitting his shoulder with hers. Even though she didn’t put any fire in it, it burns.

That evening, in the tent (like, yeah, it’s a tent, but they’re made it a comfy-ass tent. They’ve made it their home, or the closest thing they’ll ever get to one!), Taako sees Lup setting out her nicest clothes, the closest thing to ‘business attire’ that either of them own. Clean, pressed tan trousers, her shiniest knee-high boots, a red shirt that is just nice enough to possibly considered a blouse, and a blue blazer Taako didn’t even know she _had_.

He sighs and looks at his hands, rough, dry, and cracked despite the ridiculous amount of lotion he uses to try to make them soft. Scarred and calloused. The hands of an urchin-turned-travelling-chef. Not the hands of someone deserving of an institute, much less the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration.

Or…

“You’re really gonna do this, aren’t you Lup.” There’s no question in his voice.

“Whether you want me to or not, brother,” she says across the tent. Her voice is almost completely steady, but quavers at the last syllable, just like his resolve.

“You know,” He says, reaching for one of the ten applications she grabbed in her fervor to get one, and then another just in case, then a backup for the backup, “it would be really unfortunate if we wasted all this paper.” He finally looks up at her across the tent, where she’s shining her boots for the third time that night. “I might as well fill one out, too.”

Her face breaks into a sly grin at the toes of her boots. “Nah, I don’t think they could handle the both of us there. The atmosphere can only probably hold the cool factor of one Tacco twin at a time.”

“Good thing I’m getting in and not you, goofus.” He grabs the quill on the table between them and begins scratching in his sparse personal information, the perfect mirror of Lup’s.

“Oh, you spend the whole day coming up with that sick burn, dingus? I’m honored!” She throws one of the roughly twenty pillows they keep all over at his head. He pretends not to see the tear on her cheek, but the pillow smacks his writing hand and the quill _scritches_ across the whole page.

“Damn it, hand me another one!” He says and lobs it at her, where she incinerates it midair, easier than breathing. Her howling laughter fills the tent with warmth and they toss the leftover papers in the air just to watch them burn.


	2. Taako and Lup Trash Their New Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you expect anything less than significant-bordering-on-total-destruction?

The Institute, as it turns out, wasn’t lying about their spacious accommodations. When Taako and Lup walk into their room, they both freeze inside the door. 

It’s a fairly open floor plan, and they do technically share sleeping quarters, but it’s also clean and comfortable-looking, not stuffy or musty in the slightest. The beds have mattresses,  _ new  _ mattresses, with fitted sheets and two pillows and a comforter. The sleeping area is set off from the living area/kitchen space, which is well-lit and shiny. Maybe not state-of-the-art, but new enough that Taako feels his soul drifting over to examine the stove even while his feet stay stuck to the threshold. 

“Dibs on the left bed!” Lup breaks the silence crowing. She drops her bag (singular, all their belongings fit in two good-sized packs that aren’t even stuffed tight. Taako’s is a bag of holding that he found years ago, but has never been able to fill no matter how hard he tries.) and races across the living room, she jumps over the loveseat, lands in a roll, then leaps onto the twin bed on the left in a starfish. 

“Ten out of ten, really stuck the landing!” Taako yells from the doorway. He just can’t stop looking at everything. They’ve never been in a living situation with their own bathroom, but there one is, he can see it through an open door. Toilet, shower, sink, medicine cabinet. 

“Hey, you okay, dude?” Taako jolts out of his reverie. Lup is off the bed, leaning on the wall that separates the sleeping area from the rest of what can only be described as their apartment. She’s let her hair down and her boots are thrown in the general direction of the shared closet, already making herself at home. 

“I - I’m good, I’m cool,” Taako says. He coughs and finally takes a couple steps in. “I don’t know. It feels too squeaky clean for cha’ boy. What do you think?” He walks into the kitchen and sits on the small table, which sways a little.  _ Cheap. Can’t let  _ everything  _ exceed expectations.  _

Lup nods and scratches her chin as she glances around the space. “You know, I was just thinking that. This place has no soul, no character!” She grins and grabs the comforter on her bed and pulls it off in one smooth sweep, holds it in her arms, and puts it back on the mattress without bothering to smooth it out at all. 

Taako chuckles. “I think I pick up what you’re putting down.” He jumps off the table, making sure to scuff the pristine linoleum of the kitchen, and jumps as far as he can onto the small couch. Jumping up and down, he says, “Do you smell what I’m stepping in, sister?!” 

Lup races back over to their bags, giggling like a madwoman, and kicks the door shut. “I hear the gospel you’re spittin’!” She opens his bag of holding as she runs back into the bedroom and throws a scarf over the headboard, a couple throw pillows on the floor, a threadbare quilt over his bed. She comes back into the living room where Taako is now jumping between the couch and the armchair, breaking them in. She starts throwing their old spell books on the coffee table, she drops various accoutrement on the floor, on counters, in their room. Posters of obscure minstrels and bards begin affixing themselves, all crooked, some missing tacks because they could never be bothered to buy more. She makes a move for the kitchen when Taako sees her pulling out something gross in a jar, and he stops jumping to race over and block her. 

“Woah woah there, hold your horses. Keep the mysterious jar out of my kitchen.” 

“Hang on,  _ your _ kitchen? I thought we intimidated that administrator so it could be  _ our _ kitchen, not just your kitchen.” He raises an eyebrow. “And I was just gonna throw it in the fridge! I assumed it belonged in a fridge.” Taako reaches out and gingerly takes the large, slightly pulsating jar from her arms. “No,” he says, “This is gonna go in the back of the closet until either it escapes or I find someone who I hate enough to release it.” He marches back into the kitchen where she’s rummaging through the cabinets. “And of course it’s my kitchen. I love it.” He glances very quickly at the knobs on the front of the stove before crawling on top of it and hugging it as best he can from the under the range. “It’s mine now, I’ve decided.” 

They take a moment, still breathing a little heavy, to survey their handiwork. Lup did a great job, he decided, because the perfectly placed rug by the couches was now off-kilter and the corner was folded over, and there were some smoke-filled glass baubles strewn across the coffee table with his copy of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Elves”. She’d taken a couple seconds and thrown the only two pictures they had of the both of them, one which was taken in front of their aunt’s house when they were young, along with their harlequin romances and books with boring titles like “Introductory Divination” and “Potion-Brewing for Dummies”. And, for her final touch, one of Lup’s bras was swinging lightly from a ceiling fixture, its pink polka dots winking at him from above. 

“It looks a little like a dump,” Lup says, wrinkling her face. 

“Good, I can finally live in it,” Taako reaches over and pushes her shoulder slightly. She throws her head back and laughs, then sighs. 

“Orientation tomorrow. Your concentration is transmutation, right?” 

Taako grimaces and heaves himself off the stove. “Yeah, evocation isn’t really my slice.” 

“Bullshit, you’re just as good at evocation as I am, you just don’t like your food too crispy.” Her grin is infectious as she shrugs her jacket off and throws it in the general direction of the couch. It misses and lands on the floor. 

“This isn’t a cooking school, this is a more sciencey-type school. I’m just... spreading my wings, taking a stab at something new.” He opens the fridge and peeks inside, not expecting there to be anything, but still disappointed when it’s spotless and empty.  _ Note to self; fix that,  _ he thinks. 

“Well, you’ll have a hell of a time catching up to all the pricks with sticks where the sun don’t shine, I tell you what.” Lup drawls out the last sentence and lays on the couch, picks up an old magazine to hold above her face and flip through, and goes quiet. 

Taako nudges the fridge closed with his hip and flicks his wrist in her direction as he walks past to make her drop the magazine on her face. She does, with an indignant squawk. “What the fuck, dude?” 

Taako laughs and throws himself onto the right bed, which he guesses is “his bed” now, and stares at the ceiling for a bit. “Shit, we’re gonna have to develop a sleeping schedule.” 

“Not if I can help it.” 

“What time is orientation tomorrow?”

“Who gives a shit? Before the ass-crack of dawn, I think.” 

“Lup, anything before eleven is ‘the ass-crack of dawn’ to you.”

“Like I said, before the ass-cra--” Taako throws the closest pillow he can grab at her. He smells a puff of smoke, hears her cursing, then the kitchen sink turns on. 

“Dude, I don’t like setting our pillows on fire. You know this.” 

“That’s why I threw a pillow.” 

He sits up on his arm and watches her grab their sewing kit and a patch of random fabric to fix the scorched pillow. “We’re in different concentrations, there’s no way we’ll be taking the same courses. We’ll have different training regimens.” He huffs and falls back onto the most comfortable mattress he’s ever had. Is this a pillow-top? “I can’t believe you talked me into this.” 

“Well, we live here, together, and we’re going to this same institute,  _ together _ , and we’re both in the Department of Arcana,  _ together _ .” Her nimble hands make quick work of the patch job and she flops onto her own bed, on her side facing him. “And we both got in with flying colors. I bring the thrills, you bring the chills. We’re good.” 

Taako cracks a smile. “You’re right! We got this.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Taako, upon further inspection, might not got this.   
> ~~~~  
> For those wondering, I see the IPRE as less NASA, more Starfleet. Like a hybrid school/training center/technical facility. And these vignettes aren't gonna be 100% consistent in timing, but I'll try and fill in gaps. Like, all that stuff I didn't cover with the audition/test/application process? I'll find somewhere to mention it in the future. I JUST HAVE A VERY SPECIFIC VISION. ART. STUFF.


End file.
